1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling the power consumption of a display apparatus, especially a display apparatus having a plasma display panel, and more particularly a display apparatus having an AC-driven plasma display panel, a display system equipped with such a power consumption control apparatus, and a storage medium with a program stored therein for implementing such a power consumption control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Usually, power consumption control for a display apparatus, especially a display apparatus having an AC-driven plasma display panel (PDP), is performed by continuously monitoring the power consumption that changes as the total value of display data changes, and by forcefully reducing the brightness of the entire screen when the power consumption has exceeded its upper limit value and increasing the brightness when the power consumption drops below its lower limit value. In performing the control, in order to minimize the unnaturalness perceived by the viewer viewing the display, brightness is reduced gradually when it is necessary to reduce the brightness because power consumption is too large, and is increased quickly when the brightness can be increased because the power consumption is low enough to permit it.
In the case of an AC-driven plasma display, the control of brightness is accomplished by varying the number of sustain pulses during one frame period and thereby varying the length of the sustained-discharge period. The brightness of each pixel, based on display data, is achieved by dividing one frame into a plurality of sub-fields with varying sustained-discharge periods and by selectively enabling or disabling the sub-fields in accordance with whether the bits forming the pixel data are on or off. For example, when data of each pixel consists of eight bits, one frame is divided into eight sub-fields the ratio of whose sustained-discharge periods is 2.sup.0 :2.sup.1 :2.sup.2 : . . . 2.sup.7, and the corresponding sub-fields are enabled or disabled in accordance with the bit pattern of the pixel data. In the case of color display, the above control is performed independently for each of the three kinds of pixels corresponding to R, G, and B. The brightness of the entire screen is achieved by increasing or decreasing the sustained-discharge periods of all the sub-fields while maintaining the above ratio.
As described above, in a display apparatus such as a PDP having a power consumption control function, the speed with which the brightness of the entire screen is reduced to control power consumption is set slower than the speed with which the brightness is increased, in order to minimize the unnaturalness perceived by the viewer viewing the display. In other words, power consumption is quick to rise but slow to fall; therefore, when images with rapidly varying load, such as flashing images, are successively displayed, the power consumption rises quickly in the off period, but does not fall readily in the on period because the speed with which the power consumption is lowered is slow. If such patterns are repeated, the average power consumption does not settle down to the set value but exceeds the set value. If the set value is set lower than the actually permitted power consumption value to avoid the above situation, there arises a problem when displaying images with stable load, that is, the brightness and contrast are reduced more than necessary, resulting in degradation of picture quality.